1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communications terminal such as a cellular phone, (hereinafter, referred to simply as a “mobile terminal”), and more particularly, to a method of converting an SMS (Short Message Service) message into an MMS (Multimedia Message Service) compliant image file (hereinafter, referred to simply as a “photograph”), transmitting or storing such converted photograph, and a mobile terminal performing such functions.
2. Description of the Background Art
In general, SMS (Short Message Service) messages (i.e., text messages) are created, transmitted and received in a mobile communication network between mobile terminals via a base station. A Mobile Terminated SMS (MT SMS) is one type of basic service in SMS, wherein a message is transmitted to a subscriber's terminal in a point-to-point manner.
The SMS technology which allows the transmission and reception of SMS messages is useful when voice call communications is not appropriate or not desired. For example, the user may not wish to be disturbed while in a movie theater or during a business meeting. Also, compared to a voice call service, the short (text) message service is typically less expensive or even free of charge. Thus, the SMS service has a considerably high utilization ratio among the various types of communication services, because the user may communicate with other with minimal communication costs.
However, in case of currently used mobile terminals, a user must continuously manage the storage capacity of a message inbox (or other storage means) by deleting previously received messages in order to free up storage space to allow the user to receive new incoming messages due to the limits in storage capacity.
In addition, special graphical icons, symbols, characters, and the like (such as a star (), a smiley face (), a heart (), etc.) used to compose an SMS message may be incompatible between different types and models of mobile terminals or mobile terminal models of different manufacturers. Special graphical icons may include the so-called “emoticons” which are graphics having multiple colors, shapes or representations of movements that are intended to convey the user's emotions and intentions.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating one example of a problem encountered in the related art.
As shown in FIG. 1, when the user sends an SMS message having been composed by using emoticons in a mobile terminal that supports the displaying of emoticons, to a recipient's mobile terminal which does not support the displaying of emoticons, the received emoticons are omitted or incorrectly displayed on the recipient's mobile terminal and only the remaining letters and symbols in the received message are displayed.
In the related art, even if the user wishes to compose and transmit a message by using special characters and/or emoticons, the contents of the received message (text, special characters, icons, etc.) may be distorted (garbled) or the special characters and the emoticons may be omitted when displayed on the recipient's terminal. This causes a waste of time and money for the sender who created messages that will not be properly displayed to the recipient. Also, wireless (radio) communication resources are unnecessarily used.